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BBC Writer Used Subtitles To Decipher Mumbling

The writer of the second BBC drama to be hit with complaints about mumbling has admitted he had to use subtitles when watching at home.

Andrew Davies said that although he knew the cast were speaking his lines, his wife struggled to decipher the dialogue and needed help.

The BBC received a number of complaints from viewers unhappy with the sound on the series starring Gabriel Byrne, just weeks after concerns about the audibility of another high-profile drama, Jamaica Inn.

Speaking to RadioTimes.com, Mr Davies said: "I could hear it because I knew what the words were and I think that's often the problem with the people in the production - when you know what the lines are, there's a tendency to think you've heard them alright, whereas if you didn't know the thing, maybe you wouldn't."

He said his wife, Diana Huntley, had difficulty making out the sound: "She said, 'Do you mind if we have the subtitles on?'

"It's a funny thing, mumbling. It's a bit to do with actors, a bit do with with modern, flat-screen televisions and both my wife and I are of an age where our hearing is beginning to go."

Dublin-set crime drama Quirke stars Byrne as an Irish sleuth and is based on books by John Banville, writing under the pseudonym Benjamin Black.